


Change Is As Good As A Rest

by cicak



Category: Raffles - E. W. Hornung
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 19:32:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cicak/pseuds/cicak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You could say that Raffles, in his abandonment of me, drove me to hysteria.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Change Is As Good As A Rest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Based on the story 'The Rest Cure' which can be read here: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2098/2098-h/2098-h.htm#rest

I can privately admit that I was expecting something else when Raffles invited me to join him in his rest cure. However much he teased me at the time in his (oddly affecting) stolen-house growl (toneful despite its low volume), I did think he had genuinely engaged a house. Raffles is an eccentric, although low on the scale than the really notable eccentric, (compared to for example, my Uncle Bartholomew who wears a specially tailored full evening dress to bathe as he believes a gentleman should never be naked) it is not unconceivable for Raffles to rent temporary rooms so near the Albany. His stories over dinner are frequently of his charmingly implausible exploits, and I remember one story that had me in tears of mirth that involved a steak sandwich and a room at the Ritz booked under the name of Doctor Shipero. I expected us to spend the time enjoying each other’s company, drinking and planning our high season’s activities. I envisioned us playing house, valeting for each other perhaps, with such little to do. I imagined at least getting a decent jot of writing down.  
It turns out playing house with Raffles was a tedious matter. The books that were so engrossing Raffles held no appeal to me; I had read them only a few summers before and the Colonel had such a dry taste in literature otherwise. I described myself as ‘weakly fascinated’ – in truth, I was bored completely rigid. Even the light that Raffles promised me during the day was banked enough that writing was too much of a trouble for me to bother with, any extended period of writing leaving me feeling weak-headed and needing to lie down.  
Things were made worse when Raffles, in his rakish disguise of flourishing beard (surprisingly florid for someone otherwise so dark) and dishevelled suit, started to go out into the world without me. The thought of him going about his cracksman’s business whilst I stewed in both my own tedium and the airless September heat waiting for him like a good little house-rabbit drove me to contemplate making yet another grand gesture of my usefulness. You could say that Raffles, in his abandonment of me, drove me to hysteria.

I am not normally known for my ideas. Raffles has always been the ideas man, as well as the disguises man, the thief, the cricketer and the rake. It infuriated me to feel as useless as I am, boiled me inside my own skin as much as the September heat did. If only I could have one skill to complement his, I thought as I thumped probably overly loudly around the house. It was then when I saw the set of rooms belonging to our esteemed host’s wife, and a little flicker of an idea ignited in my mind.

I had not dressed in a girlish manner since the fifth form’s production of Romeo and Juliet, but then I had played the Nurse, as my frame was more suited to her than the willowy Juliet. I am unsure as to why I thought that dressing as a woman would amuse Raffles – he had never really enjoyed the bawdy type of humour I had convinced myself it would be, preferring more Wildeian types of wordplay and drollery. Nevertheless, I set to it with slightly perspiring determination; dragging the endless boxes off shelves and out of corners and assayed my options. I picked up a corset and quickly cast it aside, feeling myself blush despite being alone. I imagined having to ask Raffles to help me out of it once I had made my point and the whole situation seemed far too embarrassing to be worth my while. I did, however, choose a pair of stockings and the simplest looking belt in the lady’s collection. I will not bore you with the farce I had in getting them on, but I will say that I now believe ladies are in possession of special shoulder joints in order to function in a way demanded by the fashions of their sex. I settled for a skating skirt and feather boa and managed to slide into them with little problem. The fashions for ladies are admittedly a little thrilling for me, just on a texture perspective. A man’s sensual life is dulled by the spectrum of wools, from the near-hair shirt of the cheap wool of the back alley tailor to the finest Cashmere goat, and he is otherwise only touched by the cotton plant and the silkworm’s emissions if he is so inclined. Yet for a lady even the finest silk is quotidian in the face of the other sensations. I thrilled in the crunch of Lady Crutchley’s crepe du chine as I ran my hands over it; her satins and the feathers of my chosen boa tickled my nose and raised my gooseflesh.

I examined myself in the mirror. I have never been handsome in the way Raffles is, but I must say that generations of ladies born onto this island have fallen for men who are not tall, dark and rakishly handsome, so there must be some merit in my kind. I managed to style my hair into something that could approximate a fashionable fringe, and then proceeded to lacerate my scalp with the pins as I fixed my chosen headpiece – a large, unseasonal hat – to my head. 

I heard the shuffling click of Raffles’ return as I was applying powder to my glistening face, the heat and my excitement making the base stick in unladylike clumps around my sensitive skin. I’d shaved as close as possible, both with and against the grain, so as to try and get a ladylike finish to my skin and hide even the blond betrayal of my sex. With Raffles rustling about downstairs I quickly finished the rest of my face based on the hazy memory of the few times I witnessed my Mother do her daily routine when I were a small child, and the one time I saw my betrothed put her face back in place after we had been slightly carried away. With shaky hands I drew a thin line in kohl, patted rouge on my cheeks and finally on my lips. With my hair styled and the delicate silage of the mistresses’ Jicky trailing after me, I slipped downstairs, the slippery stockings catching on the fine grain of the wood staircase. Before descending into Raffles’ view, I slipped into the Colonel’s rooms and stole a pair of his fine gloves, the lady’s not having fit me. Buttoned above the wrist, they finished off the outfit with what I felt was convincing aplomb.

I entered the sitting room quietly and struck a pose that I once saw in a magazine that had affected me quite severely, one arm against the doorframe and the other clasped against my girlish waist. Raffles heard me and turned to tell me of his day, and I was thrilled slightly that the witticism he was no doubt about to spout died on his lips as he took me in. I smiled my best attempt at a predatory smile - I had seen the ladies he’d seduced do something more delicate, more coy, but the look the fellows at the card table often had when they looked at me was what had sprung to mind - the predatory look of someone who knew they had played their cards entirely right, even if they were holding a dud hand. I had learned few things from my friend, but hopefully this joke would be one that I was able to hold together.

For all his initial spluttering, Raffles came to me in a few long strides across the room. He looked closely, taking in my disguise as if appraising something he might be interested in. Up close his unkempt appearance making him seem taller than I in more ways than the obvious and he smelled warm and male, no doubt after all his vigorous exercise at the station.  
He touched the wave on my brow with curious amusement in his eyes. ‘Oh Bunny’ he sighed ‘you do look a sight.’ I bristled, just a little; after all he was a master of disguise who even after so many years together could deceive me with nothing more than a change of posture. Could I not replicate his success even a small jot? He tsked at my frown and lifted my chin with his index finger. ‘Do you think you are so convincing, my lady…Harriet? Are you to be my lady-accomplice from now on? Or was it perhaps something else, did you think this would turn my head? Are you offering yourself up as the bait?’ He surprised me then by stepping forward, and murmured the last into the exposed shell of my ear, causing a shiver up my back that was part physical response to his intimate closeness and part to his using of my Christian name, albeit the feminised form. I had the feeling that he knew that it affected me, though how he could, why he would deduce such a thing I would never know. I felt the cruel twist of his mouth rather than saw it.

I felt my heart in my throat, suddenly feeling like I had been plunged out of my depth into a deep pool. What had seemed like a fun jape upstairs now felt a kind of dangerous I had not felt in a long time, the burn of anticipation battling with the desire to make it into a joke. To wipe the look off Raffles’ face that said interesting, that said loot, that said mine. The look on his face that desired diamonds, that loved precious metals, that said that Raffles’ most easily committed sin, coveting, was fresh on his mind. It was a face that I had seen reflected in the pretty faces of girls, but I was no girl, this was just a joke, a game, 

I felt as frozen as my namesake in front of the Queen’s horse. Then he stepped back into my space and slid two fingers down the length of my arm and slowly, carefully, flicked the buttons of the Colonel’s gloves open, all the way down to my tremulous wrist. My pulse fluttered and I knew he could feel it, feel my reaction in the very system of my body to his presence. I felt light headed, caught in the fight or flight response. This whole thing was going too far, the Queen’s horse galloping towards me until I made my decision, took that leap that rabbits do not usually take.

I grasped his hips, felt the give in his cheap suit and pressed him to me. Hoarsely choked out ‘but you see, my man, my dearest Raffles, I am still male beneath all this. I am still your man.’

And with that I raised my hands in a frantic manner, still encased in the Colonel’s finest lambskins that I had carefully buttoned as carelessly as Raffles had undone them and dug my fingers into his overgrown hair, as neglected as that on his face. I regretted having the leather in the way, I longed to feel his hair in my hands, slipping between my fingers unkempt and beautiful, rather than the detached feel of sensation over leather. I pulled his head back and kissed him, on his luscious, open mouth with a blind, aggressive passion. My newly bare face was unusually sensitive after having to press harder than normal to get the girlish look and so I felt the rub of his beard onto such sensitive skin. The feel was a completely new experience to my nervous system, which took the sensation and mapped it southward, connecting the rasp of roughness to the area covered by the ridiculous skating skirt beloved by Mrs. Crutchley.

I was not behaving like a lady. More importantly, I was not behaving like myself. Maybe I was behaving like how I imagined Raffles wanted me to, I cannot explain what came over me as I wantonly pushed Raffles down into the overstuffed armchair and hitched up my skirts so as to sit astride his lap. Raffles made a noise, a pitiful keen of surprise and lust, the kind of noise of appreciation he makes when he finally cracks a difficult safe. He scrambled at the skirt with his unsure hands and pushed it up roughly, only to pause and drag his mouth away from me. He did not have to say a word; I knew he was delighted with the garments I wore underneath. He traced the seam of my stockings up the sensitive backs of my thighs and tucked his fingertips beneath their tops as I returned to rubbing myself against him and devouring his mouth like I had not eaten for a week.  
We were still quiet, barring the noises of our kissing and the rustle of the fabric. Both these sounded incredibly loud to my ears. Raffles moved to undress me, starting with his easing of the pins in my hair to release the hat. I held still, and he kissed and licked my ears as he dexterously relieved me of the shade I had been carried in. He threw it bodily away, and messed up my hair in retaliation for the work my fingers had done. We must have looked a sight. He surged up and growled into my ear ‘if only you were a woman, my dear, so I could take you like one. I want to slide right into you, feel you clutch my prick, hear you scream my name. I want to delight in you with every one of my senses.’  
He moved quickly then, very fast, and had our positions mostly reversed. He threw me down and wrenched up my skirts again and swallowed me down, my own prick going from the rough scrape of the fine wool to the hot, humid caress of his mouth faster than my spine could transport the feeling to my brain. I arched, urging my hands into his hair and biting my lip hard as he swirled his tongue round the tip agonisingly repetitious, sucking and teasing the most sensitive part of me until I wanted so very much to -  
I threw my hands away from his head when I realised I was holding on too hard, threw them out so that they knocked against the objects on the occasional table. The noise was unwelcome, but the action gave me ideas as I dragged my fingers along the cheap tallow candle Raffles had bought so as to not have to use the electric light and felt the obscene grease a promise against my fingers. 

I did not hesitate to pull Raffles’ head off my prick, however hard it was. I kissed him, thrilling of course to tasting my own illicitly familiar taste upon his tongue, and reached into his flies with slickened fingers. ‘I want you to take me, AJ’ I whispered into his mouth, emboldened by desire. ‘Surely I am woman enough that you cannot be chastened by the law?’ 

He settled back into the armchair and I resumed my place upon his lap. Raffles helped me by holding up my skirt and hindered me by kissing my neck as I attempted to prepare myself, still distracted by the novelty of having Raffles completely at my mercy.  
I rested back on his thighs and watched Raffles unravelling. He was mad with arousal and obviously thrown by my actions. It was not often I did something so unexpected or physical. His pego was straining against his half-fastened trousers and I was reaching back in before I realised what I was doing. We were both frantic then, and I all but tore the buttons from his flies as I struggled to get my hand on it. My hand was still slick from the impromptu candle misuse and I felt his thighs flutter as he struggled to hold on to himself as I worked him in an uncoordinated fashion to get him ready for the unspoken next act. 

I did not pause; I could not pause when I had such momentum. I had both hands upon Raffles glorious prick and momentarily lost my balance as he slid his fingers inside me, long seamer’s fingers, hands the papers always lauded as safe, as sure, ones I had stared at and fantasised about. Both hands clasped on my arse and pulling me open for him with such determination, slick and insistent. I had not done this before with another, but a man who feels the way I do, so close to the edge of the law in so many ways, a man like myself has certainly had a try.

I shucked the skirt, still pooled around our hips, over my head so as to give us a clear view. My own prick, now standing straight up and weeping with the extent of the anticipation, stained the front of the good lady’s silk stocking-belt and the black lines stood out in stark relief against my pale skin and golden hair. Raffles remained mostly dressed, and the juxtaposition of myself in nothing but a stolen and defiled piece of ladies wear and him still in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat, trousers open just enough to function was deeply affecting. I positioned myself over his cock and said a silent prayer to my female ancestors as I bore down and took Raffles into my body as deeply as I had into my heart.

I would like to say we joined perfectly, but it took time, and I felt every inch like a herculean labour. For nothing Raffles and I did was ever easy, and in another world we might have done this on the ides, or any other adrenaline moment, or even in a quiet, ignored corner of the hammam. After so long, and under such flimsy pretence it felt like the top of a champagne bottle bursting off. I had no idea how much had escaped, whether there would be anything even left once the effervescence had subsided, but I had to enjoy it while I could. 

I felt Raffles stop; a thin sheen of perspiration lay upon his brow like morning dew.  
‘My dearest Rabbit, will you please stop endlessly introspecting? Your face betrays you, not your lips, so please, if you could, keep your mind on getting fucked’ he ground out between gritted teeth and punctuated his statement with a small, deliberate jerk of his hips – barely a thrust, but a promise of the resounding fucking to come. 

And it did come, I clung to his shoulders, his fine bowler’s arms, I counted his thrusts like one would balls in an over until I lost count with the innings of his powerful moves. He supported my back and encouraged me to lean back, drape my thighs over the arms of the chair and allow him to move me, rub his prick, the glorious middle stump of the metaphor against the place in my body God had hidden in a place I could never reach but made me feel like I was a ball hit for six. I flew higher, and felt Raffles grunt and felt it, the moment he lost all control and jerked and twitched inside me, tiny movements and an alien sensation I could not place a he came deep inside me. It was enough really, when he then placed one of his lovely hands upon my prick and let me fall completely limp as I twitched and yelled and whimpered the intensity of my own release against his chest. His other hand smothered my cries, it smelled and tasted of sex and sweat and some kind of promise.

As we breathed together, I waited for the twist to come. The narratively inopportune coupling we had enjoyed left me with an edge that even the joy could not erase from the bones. He had so many outs, he obviously did not understand sex within men from our whispered conversation earlier, and I could see him declaring ‘Sorry, old boy, but you have to understand that I only fuck women’. I could feel my heart splitting in preparation of being let down. We could instead never speak of it again, and I could resign this to only be remembered in the depths of solitary nights when my prick in my hand could not be denied and I rubbed something phallic inside me in a dismal recreation of this evening. Or he could lash out, tell me I was deluded, a fantasist, already with someone else, that it could never, in any terms happen again. He could cut me out for being a sodomite, a crime too far for him. I trembled, partly as I came back down to earth, and partly as I catastrophised every future-imperfect iteration of what could now become of us.

Instead, Raffles stroked my hair, petted me until my breathing slowed. Raffles put me back together in the silence, as I lay drained and unmoving. He wiped me down carefully with his handkerchief. He sucked each one of my weak fingers until they were clean and brushed my hair back into a vaguely masculine style. He bent and undid each of the clasps holding the stockings and peeled them down my coltishly weak legs, before pocketing them, a distracting ball in his right side. He undid the belt and did the same with it in the left pocket. He adjusted himself as he looked down at me, then after a moment’s contemplation, took all his clothes off and lay down with me and kissed me, softly, thoroughly, like we had all the time in the world.

‘I think I have had enough of rest for now, don’t you Bunny?’ he said against my hair. ‘I would like for us to go to the Albany, and get into bed, and never stop.’

I smiled, nodded, and we did, until Raffles was stolen from me, first temporarily and then in that gut-wrenching moment when he was taken from me forever, we stayed together, and never rested. Raffles always did the one thing I could never predict, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> With eternal thanks to B, K and J for their cheerleading, betaing and reassurance. Happy Yuletide Frannie! I hope you enjoyed it.


End file.
